Do Founders Need a Publicist to Get Media Coverage?

Over the course of my career, I cannot tell you how many founders have come to me seeking PR services. Not because they understand what media relations is or even what the role of a publicist is, but because they've seen so many successful brands with active PR teams promoting their story, offering, and competitive advantage, and they assume that the reason for their success is the publicist. (Which does probably have a huge role to play in it.)

Why Many Founders Assume They Do

A quote that is widely credited to Bill Gates is "If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on PR," and there's absolutely some truth to that. I can't tell you how many times I've seen brands who thought they wouldn't be able to invest in certain marketing or growth endeavors until they got a top-tier headline about their brand, and suddenly so many more doors were opened for them, the least being the increase in sales that funded their next few months.

In fact, many of the brands over the last 10 years that have gone from idea to household name have invested in PR very early on.

When Founders Don't Need a Publicist

However, just as many founders think that PR is going to turn them from unsuccessful to unicorn. Sometimes they only have an idea, or they have a concept but the delivery of that concept consistently and scalably leaves a lot to be wanted, and they're hoping that media coverage is going to open the doors that they need to remedy the issues.

While a publicist usually works miracles in turning words into top-tier headlines and turning those words into sales, a publicist can't fix a broken system.

Without customer success stories, a brand is just an idea, and ideas can't be sustainably published in a PR campaign.

Investing in PR before you've ironed out all the kinks of your company is like putting a Band-Aid on a train wreck.

And it can come with some serious consequences. Media relations is so popular because you can reach so many eyeballs, millions of potential customers, partners, and investors, without spending advertising budget. The reason why PR has more value than advertising is because journalists are ethically* bound to the truth.

When an editor says "this is the best lipstick I've ever used," that lipstick brand will experience way more sales than when they publish four times as much advertising that says "the best lipstick I've ever used." Because editors are often sent these products, they often experience a higher volume for media consideration than most consumers. So if they've tested a hundred of these products and say this is the best, that carries a lot of weight.

And so they cannot say "this company is so amazing and has helped so many people and is life-changing" if it's not true, because that will ruin their credibility. They might not be able to get future jobs.

And the outcome on this is usually more embarrassing and damaging to a company's lifetime success than not having media coverage in the early days.

If you're a founder who is still working on consistent deliverability and customer satisfaction, at this point, your resources are better invested in other areas rather than PR.

When Founders Might Need a Publicist

However, if you have incredible customer reviews, the logistics of scalability and growth already mapped out, and an interesting founding story (and before you say "I don't know if I have an interesting founder story": I used to represent cannabis companies who are essentially finance bros who used their inheritance to start a cannabis company, which now is like one of the most basic stories ever told, but that is the baseline for an interesting founder story. So don't tell me you don't have an interesting founder story. I promise you, you do) and you're ready to start streamlining your other marketing endeavors, you may be in need of PR. Public relations, while coming with a hefty price tag, is deservedly so because of all the lift it gives to the other areas of your growth. Quality PR helps with reputation management, helps with leadership visibility, helps with team communication, in addition to providing lifts to SEO, email marketing, social media marketing, even investor relations. 

And all you really need to start PR is a website and some good imagery. 

And the final thing is: you might need a publicist if you have the budget to invest in multiple months of PR before you start seeing PR traction, because PR is not instantaneous. If you can't invest in at least 6 months of PR, you're basically just throwing money down the drain because stop-and-start PR just does not yield nearly enough to justify investing for just 3 months and then coming back when you make a little more money. Save your resources.
Another sign you might need PR or a publicist is if you just cannot manage on your own or within your own established team. The incoming requests from journalists, the buzz, the reviews on the brand. At a certain point, CEOs have to delegate everything, including the brand voice. And publicists are very good options to start offloading any of the relations between the brand and stakeholders.

What to Do When Budget Gets in the Way of PR

For many founders, they are ready for PR in every way except for having the budget to consistently invest for 6 months.

Another publicist and I were talking the other day, and we agreed that the state of PR right now is a race to the bottom. So many PR firms that have notoriously high rates like $15,000, $30,000, or $50,000 retainer minimums are all now offering $5K-a-month retainers.

Which, for a new founder, even $5,000 a month is a huge amount of money. And so founders are going to publicists thinking $5,000 is a lot of money, and these publicists at these big firms are thinking this is their discount rate and they're going to offer services that match that, whereas the founder is thinking this is a lot of money so they're getting their premium service. That dissonance is what gives a lot of PR a bad name: founders are expecting $15,000-a-month results for a fraction of the investment.

And I mention this because in this market currently, if you barely have the money to invest in a monthly public relations retainer where you could probably do it, but there's a good chance you might have to skip a month of payment, or you're not going to be able to pay the full amount every month, or you're going to have to go very bare bones, there are more strategic ways to approach media relations with your resources than hiring a publicist.

Journalists actually love hearing from founders themselves if they can speak the language of media. Because oftentimes founders don't really understand how PR works, and so they're sending their sales deck and their sales information to a journalist who is trying to tell stories for their readers.

But I've seen many founders who were former journalists or former marketers and have some understanding of what journalists are looking for, and they ran their early PR campaigns for 2 or 3 years before they were able to hire a publicist consistently.

Now, many publicists get up in arms about this.

I can't tell you how many publicists I have commenting on my ads for a $47 PR solution saying that you can never replace a publicist.

And they're not wrong, because if you are a CEO talking with investors, shareholders, stakeholders, revenue reports, doing media interviews also, managing your own public relations is probably going to be impossible unless you just don't have any work-life balance. And at a certain point in a brand's growth, you do want the experience of a publicist at the table saying "Oh no! That's not a good idea for XYZ reason."

But in the early days of a company, when you can barely scrounge together one monthly retainer let alone six to be able to start seeing the traction of PR, founders can offload the early media relations on their existing team, even if they are a solo founder and solo operator at that point.

Journalists love working with founders directly, especially when they speak the language of media, because it cuts out the middle person. They can call you up when they need a quote. They don't need to schedule it through your publicist. That means when they're on deadline, you're a preferred source over someone who might have more experience than you in the topic that they're looking for a quote on but has to go through a four-person PR team to get an interview approved. No, no. They want to call you.

And so just because you don't have a budget for a publicist does not mean you're not available for incredible PR and incredible headlines.

And unfortunately, until I built the Four Email PR System, most DIY PR solutions for founders are designed to put you on a hamster wheel.

Direct connection platforms where you can supposedly connect to journalists directly are really aimed at helping journalists, not so much founders. So you might get all this incredible media coverage, but it's in a lens for an audience who is not your ideal customer. And so that feature, that link in the article, even that product placement is kind of lost on the reader. Where you spent the time, you had to first sign up for the platform, search for the request, schedule the interview, get them all this information. At least 1 to 3 hours of work total, and there's still no sales or change in your growth trajectory.

Another popular DIY outlet for founders is press release wires, which usually just end up on the back page of a syndicated site. So you might get placements on 118 different sites, but then you look at the view count and only a hundred people have viewed it. So there are sites where people didn't even read the article. And so while press release wires are often used in a publicist-run campaign, they are not the one-stop solution that they are advertised to founders as.

What Actually Gets Journalists to Say Yes?
If founders know the roadmap to media coverage and how to speak the language of journalists, it is very easy for founders to do their own PR. It's how the Four Email PR System was born.

Very early on in my career, when I had segmented to just plant and intimate wellness brands, I had a number of my friends coming to me. Lawyers, doctors, real estate developers, therapists, coaches, who just couldn't afford to pay the retainer of a PR firm.

And I told them, listen, if you're not doing a big launch right now, if you're not publicizing this massive initiative launch, etc., you're much better just doing your own PR.

They would use my formula for getting top tier media attention. And founder-led PR was often more successful than publicist PR because the journalist can fall directly in love with the founder. Not so much having to be convinced to find someone awesome through someone else.

And so if you're curious about how to speak the language of media, how to get journalists to respond, how to multiply every media interview, how to place 8 to 12 top-tier headlines per month on a founder's schedule, discover the Four Email PR System.

To learn more about the Four Email PR System created by MAVPR, read the announcement blog here. ​

*With the rise of conservative media, "ethically bound to the truth" has become "ethically bound to their truth."